Features - Storage Innovations:

DISPLAYTECH RECEIVES MILLION DOLLAR AWARD FROM NIST

Displaytech Inc, a leader in liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) microdisplays, announced that it has been awarded $1.2 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Advanced Technology Program (ATP) to develop write heads for holographic data storage (HDS). The project, a joint venture with InPhase Technologies, aims to develop drives for removable optical discs with a capacity greater than that of 1,000 CD-ROMs and comparable improvements in data rates over conventional magnetic and optical drives.

The HDS market represents a huge opportunity for Displaytech's patented ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) technology. Successful drive development could yield inexpensive products with the same compact form factor as existing CD or DVD drives, but with storage capacities up to 1TB of information and read/write rates in excess of 1 gigabyte per second. These drives will find initial application in high-value segments such as professional digital video recording and enterprise data archive, and will then proliferate into broader consumer content-distribution and personal computing markets. The total available market value of these applications is greater than $2 billion.

Displaytech's fast-switching FLC on silicon technology is the ideal base for an HDS write head, providing high recording rates. Additional advantages accruing to write heads made using Displaytech's FLC technology platform include:

• Small achievable pixel pitch and simple packaging requirements result in low head cost
• Existing volume markets for FLC electronic viewfinders provide an established manufacturing base, reducing HDS risk and time to market.

Under the ATP, Displaytech will develop FLC spatial light modulators optimized for use as HDS write-heads.